26th March

For reasons I can’t quite explain, on Tuesday I decided to book a flight to New York. This is why I have not written in my journal until now.

This is not something I normally do. I don’t recall how it happened. I was sitting by the lake eating a fruit-cup and the next thing I remember I was standing outside the travel agent with a ticket in my hand. It is probably for the best that I don’t think about this too much.

New York City is a very strange place, and it is very busy, and very noisy. I do not understand for example why when there is a perfectly good set of stop lights at an intersection, there is also a man or woman in a yellow jacket whistling at people to keep moving quickly, something I don’t think people in New York have much difficulty doing.

On Wednesday at the intersection near my hotel there was a small round man with a beard shouting in a very gruff voice something about buying gold. The next day I walked by, and heard, not saw, the same gentleman yelling “SHOESHINE!” I wished I had been around an additional day to see what next he might be advertising.

Central Park was full of people taking pictures of small patches of grass. Contingents of them passed me regularly lugging immense tripods and very heavy-looking bags of equipment. They all looked very determined and did not look like they were having a very good time. I think they wanted to make sure they were capturing as much as possible of the experience they didn’t appear to be having.

Obviously there are more subways and elevated trains in Onyxfeld than there are in New York, but NYC compensates for this deficiency in volume by being extremely complicated. I became lost at one point, but was entertained by a young man in scruffy clothes, singing Ave Maria at the top of his lungs right in front of me, before he thrust his cap in my general direction. I only had a twenty and asked him for change, but he said something rude and moved down the carriage. Perhaps he had also just been to an ATM.

They have extremely large museums. I very much wanted to see the bottle-cap exhibit, but could not as the museum-lobby ceiling was too high and I became agoraphobic. The picture of the ceiling is enclosed.

I went to the Museum of Modern Art. I admit that much of what I saw did not make sense to me, but then again, neither does a lot of art I look at. I spent a considerable amount of time looking at one particular piece that was I beginning to understand, until the security guard asked me why I was staring at a fire extinguisher. I told him I thought it was art, and he said that no, it was an actual fire extinguisher. I left the museum soon after.

Here are some pictures I took:

The very high ceiling in the museum. I left shortly after taking this photograph.This is a street grille. It is a similar design to others I have seen, and so I will catalog this for later comparison.A cockroach I found in the hotel bathroom, trapped beneath a plastic cup.I only realized upon standing on this that I did not have permission to stand on this.I presume this is some form of \’anti-sitting\’ device.

All in all I enjoyed my visit to the city, although I’m not sure I would go again. To be honest, I’m still not quite sure why I went in the first place. I look forward to being able to return to work. Kenneth needs feeding too.